Random thoughts

• Yesterday I experienced something unique. I was driving down 37, heading to volleyball, when I pulled up at a stoplight next to a car that was blasting Aerosmith. I flipped through my stations, and hey! The same song was on XM 46.
  
  Yes, that's unique. I have never, in all the years I've subscribed (almost four), heard the same channel in another car. (I have walked into BWW once or twice when they've had their music on the same station.) And what's funny about this time is that somehow we were off by a second or so; my music switched and then hers followed, kind of like the delay you get when one TV is watching the HD feed and one is watching the SD feed. (And yes, that still happens in bars.)
  
  It's sad. XM and Sirius really screwed that up, didn't they?
• I just remembered one reason why I really don't use my iPod Touch that much any more. I connected it to sync and recharge today, and of course there was a software update waiting for me. I let iTunes try to install it, and naturally it didn't work and so we have to go through the whole factory-settings and restore-from-backup crap again.
  
  You know what? Apple is exactly like Microsoft. They always have been. It just looked different in the PC market after Apple screwed themselves out of a decent share with the "no-clones" philosophy, but in every instance where Apple is the dominant company, they have no problems doing the exact same stuff that Microsoft does. (Priced any e-books lately?)
  
  The idea behind the iPod is that it's supposed to be an easy-to-use music player, but Apple still hasn't figured out that the one-button scheme is and always has been stupid (which is easier to use, an iPod Touch or a non-Apple touch-screen phone?), and when even simple upgrade processes don't work smoothly, well, Apple should be thankful that their competitors have been forced out of the market for the most part. (Some did it to themselves. Zune?)
• Football woo! The Big Ten is splitting into divisions that will actually preserve the Michigan-Ohio State end-of-season rivalry. Amazingly, it took an electronic campaign by fans to make that happen. (Yes, even Delany admitted it had an effect.) Yeah, people believe some really stupid stuff in meetings like that, I guess. (Anybody looking forward to Florida State-Miami in early October? What's the opposite of woo?) It'll be interesting to see how the divisions play out next year ... and also interesting to see how NCAA handles it. Guess what, EA? You've got some changes to make! I know, you can't just push out the same game you did last year ... oh wait, that's Madden. Right. NCAA actually does improve occasionally.
  
  but woo football! (Even though the Lions, Purdue, Michigan, and Portland State will probably all suck.)

Here's a footnote to my iPod experience: after all that crap, I had app updates, so I went to install them, but you have to "purchase" them even though the updates are free, and the terms of the agreement had changed, so I had to read those first, and iTunes is remarkably unresponsive when it brings up forms and such, so that took forever, and then after agreeing to the new terms, I had to go back and get the apps again because HORRORS! if it actually did what I asked it to after I agreed to the new terms.

iTunes could be less user-friendly, but I'm not sure how.